Catherine Malabou to hold this year's Spinoza Chair

Central topic is Philosophy and Anarchy

4 February 2019

This year, the Spinoza Chair of the Philosophy Department of the University of Amsterdam will be held by Catherine Malabou, Professor of Philosophy at Kingston University (London). This year's central topic is philosophy and anarchy.

The issue of anarchy is at once metaphysical and political. Nevertheless, philosophy and politics have always turned their back on each other when defining it. One of the fundamental motivations of my lectures is to understand the reason of such a non-dialogue.

Different, sometimes contradictory, signs are making manifest the necessity of a new interrogation on anarchy in the current global political situation, far beyond the idea of a violent strategy against the State. How are we to understand and interpret those signs?

As a part of her Spinoza professorship Malabou will give two lectures in the auditorium of the University of Amsterdam, which can be visited free of charge:

Catherine Malabou is one of the most versatile French philosophers of this time. She obtained her PhD with Derrida on an influential dissertation on Hegel, and has ever since sought the dialogue between philosophy and other disciplines, including neuroscience, in refreshing ways. Malabou is Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, and distinguished professor of Comparative Literature and European Languages and Studies at the University of California at Irvine. She has held numerous visiting chairs in the US (Berkeley, Buffalo, Madison, The New School). Her most recent book is Morphing Intelligence, From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains (in press, Columbia University, March 2018).

About the Spinoza chair

Since 1995, the Philosophy Department of the University of Amsterdam has annually appointed a foreign philosopher to the Spinoza chair. As part of the appointment, the Spinoza professor gives a number of lectures intended for a broad audience that wants to stay informed about contemporary developments in philosophy.

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